WEST HARTFORD — More than 300 people gathered at town hall Monday to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and they included a few who had met King or heard him speak.

During the town's 19th annual celebration Monday, the Rev. Dr. Frederick "Jerry" Streets invited people to stand if they'd had personal experience of King.

David C-H Johnston of West Hartford said he attended one of King's speeches at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1963, when Johnston was 19. Today, Johnston teaches a transitional class that focuses on life skills and adjusting to college life at Eastern Connecticut State College.

Before that, Johnston said, he was involved in the civil rights movement, studied urban planning in Wisconsin and wrote his thesis on how people of color were left out of planning and development. He said he was involved in "a young, black protest group" led by a friend named Richard, who "mysteriously disappeared" following an FBI investigation trying to link Richard and Johnston to a Black Panthers movement in Chicago.

Johnston said he's always been involved in civil rights issues and that the desire to give back came from his parents, who told him he had to use his privilege and give back to his community.

The day's keynote speaker, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving President Linda J. Kelly, asked those gathered, "We have not yet fully embraced our diversity as a nation, nor even as a community so where do we go from here?"

The Archer Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Windsor held its annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at Windsor Town Hall Monday afternoon. The event included music, mime, a theatrical performance, reflections on Dr. King by students, and a rousing keynote address by Rev. William L. Campbell, pastor of Archer Memorial, on the theme, "Keep on Knocking!" An excerpt from Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech was read by Allen Smalls. The event, which was attended by more than 100 people, concluded with the closing hymn, "We Shall Overcome." (Cloe Poisson)

Kelly spoke about her experience living in the South during the 1950s and 1960s. "It was a time and place where I could not sit down at the drugstore lunch counter, could not visit the public library, except of course, the less-stocked Negro branch, could not access the public park, could not drink water from a public fountain except for the one marked colored, and could not sit wherever I chose on the bus."

Kelly said race "served as a constant reminder of lesser than, different from."

Kelly noted the change. "Those days of harsh, legally-imposed, socially accepted segregation, of so-called separate but equal accommodations, and I can tell you they were not equal, are behind us."

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Connecticut on several occasions, including as a young man to work on a Simsbury tobacco farm and in 1964 to receive an honorary degree from Yale University. Click through this gallery to see photos of King in Connecticut, Courant coverage of his visits and life, and Connecticut's reaction to his assassination.

Concluding her speech, Kelly asked again where the community should go next. "We must be willing and able to adjust to new ideas, and remain informed, vigilant and ready to face the challenges of change … we should not sit by waiting for the next Martin Luther King, but consider the ways, even the small ways, we can have an impact."

For Helena Richards, a special education teacher at the Capitol Region Education Council's Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, the yearly celebration in West Hartford has been an important event for her and her children to attend.

"It's important for my kids to make that connection with their heritage," Richards said. Richard's daughter Kaitlyn Jones, a 16-year-old junior at Conard High School, was one of two students chosen to read an essay about King.